


Not One, But So Many Fewer

by Laiska



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Christmas, F/M, Gen, Implied Relationships, Loss, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Shippy if you Squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 04:41:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9965564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laiska/pseuds/Laiska
Summary: Things don't change much over the years. People come and go, but the crux of things is always the same, isn't it?But, some parts we can never reclaim.





	

**Author's Note:**

> It's a bit late in the season for a holiday fic, probably, but that one panel from the "Reflections" comic stuck with me. I'm also iffy on the theory that the person Pharah is dining in the comic with is her father, but I've decided to go with it for this.

After 30 years, nothing had changed.

They sat and stared to the tune of dust falling from the ceiling, flakes caught in the window light like hot, dry snow. Two old statues in their chairs, faces pulled and mouths clamped in funereal aplomb, looking just past one another at empty walls and vacant streets.

Three days now, even knowing the venture was fruitless. Three days spent watching, waiting for a movement that never came, but both of them too stubborn to admit that perhaps they had been mistaken this once, that perhaps even all their years of experience _could_ be misled now and then, and that they were wasting their time. By now, the mission was not in anticipation of their target, but a silent competition against the other to admit defeat.

30 years nearly, and the fire that burned between them had diminished to smoldering ember, but even through death and departure it was never extinguished, but licked at them inexorably, itching through the skin.

So that finally, to break the ice, the soldier said, glancing at the gear on his wrist, "You know, today's the 25th."

"Is it?" replied the sniper, gaze averted. "I hadn't noticed."

Her voice had grown thicker, the edges rougher, but it was the same biting sarcasm that had lashed at him, decades ago, when he assumed (with only the best intentions, he assured so many times after) that she might never have celebrated Christmas.

 _Money goes everywhere_ , she had told him. _And everyone loves presents._

 

And so had been the start of their first peacetime celebration of Yule. The event was in part a PR ploy, a photo-op to show the organization's solidarity with the people they served in finding a normal life after a hideous war. In other parts, it was a token congratulations to all the operatives for keeping a good face through everything they had done, had been made to do, had failed. And they played their role in this exhibition dutifully, until the cameras were full and the reporters sated, and finally they were left alone—just the agents of Overwatch, some decorations, and too many hors d'oeuvres.

They had been quick to break down, sharp shoulders going lax, falling into pockets in corners with the few they wished to speak to, tired of facing crowds and screens and everyone else. Jack had been the first to try and break the stale mood, cracking jokes and brandishing goblets of punch and commenting on the decorations, which, given their location, were unmistakably European, in few but so many small ways unlike the kind he knew back home. It was a remark on one of the confections on the platters that had finally sent a burst of noise into the room—Lindholm and Wilhelm arguing boisterously about dueling traditions from their homes while everyone else perked up to listen, unable to continue moping beneath the chorus of interlaced and alcohol-tinged bellows.

It was Ana he had approached first after that, cheeky with a sprig of plastic mistletoe tucked behind his back, smiling his boy scout smile as though he thought she might not have noticed the way he had been eyeing her all evening, her rare dressed-down form and the sweater that fit to curve across her muscles and everywhere else. Zürich was too chilly for her liking, she had said more than once, despite training that prepared her for every climate and situation. Jack didn't complain. He teased and held the prop in the air between them, and with her usual warm brusqueness she suggested that she might comply—if he tried it first on Gabriel to give her a show. Gabriel, who sat on the side of the room, uncharacteristically shy and cold, looking almost lost without his cap to shield the short waves of hair that crowned him. Gabriel, who for all his scars and his scowls appeared nearly cherubic framed by tinsel and lights.

With a lopsided grin he crossed the room and sidled up beside him, artificial leaves hoisted to frame a kiss, sudden, taken unasked, on lips that pulled away, confused and angry, until Jack whispered to him, and he glanced back across the room to their playful voyeur. The two shared a silent communication and then Gabriel, mind made, took the toy from Jack's hand and clutched his face, pinned the blonde with another sloppy attack, so that those who caught the scene blushed and laughed, some far more aware of their history than the others.

She laughed as well, but the sniper had remained in her spot against the wall, arms folded, LED candles refracting on her long, dark hair. She laughed, though she was aching, the scene empty to her despite the mounting cheer. Jack knew why, and his heart stung for her as he glanced across the way through the tangle of Gabriel's hands. Fareeha was still with her father, no place for a little girl to travel with them when they were constantly on the move, embroiled in fiery engagements. Even in this new calm, it had been months since they were together, and Jack had seen the way the hardened woman held back tears the last time she saw the child's pudgy smile over a holoscreen. The same look lingered on her face then. It was finally Reinhardt who pierced the awkward stillness to comfort her.

 

It was one of the only times they had all been happy together—the first and the last before they fell into new patterns, camaraderie dwindled and everything else began to change, turning seasons on a broken time lapse.

Until the present, where these things seemed like echoes, hollow and decayed.

So many names—Tomos, Liao, Valentín, Rahman, Sol—dipped low in memory, with the faces that smiled behind them that evening. So many friends and comrades drifted away, missing, deceased. And peace that was so strenuously won breaking slowly down into a raw and nascent chaos.

Until there were two. Old soldiers, in their tomb, on display in their private exhibit, both with their minds on ancient things and excuses, both ignoring the missive that they knew a certain ape knew they had received. Quiet and joyless, and filled with nothing so much as regrets.

And yet after these years, it was the same. The soldier's heart still burned, like acid in his gut. The sniper's heart still withered for her daughter, who was again away with her father. And the friends who once surrounded them were still happy, even if they were nowhere near—except for the ones who were gone.

Gone, if not forgotten, but gone all the same, faces in photographs a far cry from the real thing. So many fewer names on the list, gifts they would never again have to buy.

And for each fewer name, an empty space; a place that remained for them, even if they would never be refilled.

Except for the one who still lived.

That list could run as deep as the trenches of the sea, but there would never be a place left for a traitor.

The man under lights and mistletoe would never be there to smile at them again.

Perhaps, after all, some things had changed.


End file.
